Spending Too Much Time At Work

Trying to run your business as a one-man show will only put you on the fast track to utter burnout. So if you think being the boss and being in charge are the same thing, it’s no wonder you’re always burning the candle at both ends. Instead, you need to be putting the right people in charge of the right things. But first, you’ll need to figure out what mistakes you are making with your employees.

From a management perspective

When you first kicked-off your business, you had to do just about everything yourself. But now that you’ve got staff to do it for you, you still can’t seem to break the habit of hovering around the office looking for the first signs of disaster and snatching up loose ends before they even have a chance to land on your employees’ desks. This failure to delegate might come partly from needing to be in control at all times, but it could also reflect on your opinion of your staff’s capabilities. If you don’t trust them to get the job done, you need to ask yourself why. Could it be that you don’t feel like they have the necessary knowledge or skills? This is something that can be rectified with training.

At training level

It’s surprising how many companies do not furnish their new staff with a detailed job description, company organogram, systems and processes manual or basic training. This is ground zero; the very foundation that supports efficiency. Without it, even well-managed and happy employees won’t be able to tick all the right boxes. After all, how can you hope to have staff that will one day exceed your expectations when they don’t even know what those are?

In terms of personal life

If your staff have all the necessary information, support and autonomy to do their job to the best of their ability, but still aren’t performing, there may be a work-life balance issue. Employees are people with lives away from their desks and sometimes these personal aspects of their lives can become more demanding for a limited time.

Dealing with an illness, taking care of a restless new-born, a death in the family and even planning for something exciting like a wedding can affect your staff’s ability to concentrate. The quickest way to get this ironed out is to sit down and talk to them. This will give them an opportunity to raise any problems and potential solutions, whether it be a flexi-time schedule, reduced workload or more help. If they don’t have anything to raise, the discussion will at least make them aware that you’ve noticed a dip in their work, so they can start taking steps to rectify the issue on their own.

In general, employees who don’t value or want to grow in their jobs are rare. So if you’re struggling to keep up with the demands of your business, you probably have an issue with more than one employee. It’s up to you to put your business under the microscope and find the cracks that are leaking productivity so you can patch them up, put your business on autopilot and take a well-deserved vacation.